The sheer number of attacks on websites and blogs around the world is rising, and things are only going to get worse.
You can safely assume that if your website or blog hasn’t been hacked yet, then it’s inevitable that at some point in time someone will attempt to hack into your site.
On March 11, 2014, technology sites like Cnet.com began reporting that over 162,000 WordPress-powered websites had been hacked.
Thousands of websites are hacked every year! Will yours be one of them?
(Screenshot image: Blog Defender)
According to the Cnet report,
“With some old-fashioned trickery, hackers were able to get more than 162,000 legitimate WordPress-powered Web sites to mount a distributed-denial-of-service attack against another Web site.”
(Source: cnet.com/news/ddos-attack-is-launched-from-162000-wordpress-sites)
As reported by security firm Sucuri, hackers had leveraged a well-known flaw to attack unsuspecting WP websites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service cyber attack (DDoS) towards another popular website.
You may think that the information in your website has no significant value to hackers, but the reality is that to a hacker, all websites provide an opportunity to profit or benefit at your expense.
If hackers can discover a web security flaw that allows them to gain any form of control of your website, that site can then be employed as a “bot” to attack more highly-valued web sites.
The truth is that brute-force software bots are most likely searching for exploits and trying to break into your website or blog as you are reading this page right now. Whether they will get into your site successfully depends on how hard you can make it for hackers and botnets to continue persisting until they can work out a way to get access, or decide to look for a less secure target.
How Much Information About Your WordPress Site Are You Broadcasting To Hackers?
Do you own a WordPress site? If so, visit Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security scan …
(Website Security Check Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)
You will see that the test returns a number of results and details about your site setup …
(Hackertarget – WordPress security check results. Screenshot: Hackertarget.com)
It should be obvious after using the tool shown above that if you can see all of this information, so can hackers.
(Screenshot source: BlogDefender.com)
The ability to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed on your site, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this can inform them about any security weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.
Fortunately, there is a solution that will stop broadcasting all of this information about your web site and make your site invisible to malicious users and bots.
Blog Defender WordPress Security Solution
Product Description
The product is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.
Matt Garrett, the developer of BlogDefender developed BlogDefender after noticing that a WordPress blog he set up for his mother got hacked into. This blog was new and so had literally nothing of value to offer, yet it was still hacked.
Matt only became aware of this after being contacted by his host and noticing that a significant amount of unusual activity had occurred inside his site, as well as the addition of several malicious files by whoever had broken into his mother’s site.
(Screenshot source: BlogDefender.com)
This simple example is evidence that every website has some value to hackers.
Blog Defender scans you WordPress site for security holes …
And let’s you quickly and easily fix these …
Plugins
Blog Defender comes with 3 plugins for WordPress:
Plugin #1 “Automated Backups” in the Blog Defender suite helps you schedule automated backups …
(Image source: Blog Defender)
The “Automated Backups” plugin lets you do secure backups to your server, external servers and popular cloud solutions using different backup methods (e.g. FTP), perform complete or partial backups, exclude files or tables from backups, restore previous backups, replace URLs (for site migrations), do bulk text string replacements in databases, perform malware scans and blacklist checks automatically, and more.
Plugin #2 “WP Security” provides your web site with security …
(Screenshot source: Blog Defender)
The “WordPress Security” plugin performs a range of essential file and site security functions (see “Product Features” section below).
The third plugin lets you scan your plugins, themes and WP core files to detect if any of your files have been changed, and repair any problems it uncovers …
(Source: BlogDefender site)
Pro Plugin # 3 also scans content to see if any malicious scripts have been inserted into your site, bans bad bots, blocks brute force attacks and detects any content leeching (where others benefit from your content without offering anything in return).
Video Tutorials
In addition to plugins, Blog Defender also includes video tutorials and training documentation that teach you exactly what to do to protect your site from malicious attacks …
(Screenshot image: BlogDefender website)
Learn more here:
Benefits Of Using Blog Defender
Here are just some of the benefits of using Blog Defender to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets on your site:
Fast And Easy To Install And Use
The Blog Defender plugins are very easy to install. Just upload a zip folder that contains the plugins to your Plugins folder via your admin user account and activate.
Really Simple And Easy To Follow
Blog Defender can be used as a do-it-yourself step-by-step training product that will walk you through the website security process and show you what to do, including how to set everything up, and even which WordPress plugins you can use for free to get the job done without paying for additional or unnecessary expenses.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Protect your website from hackers, spammers, bad bots, data miners and malicious users whose aims is to exploit your site for their own personal and financial gain.
- Helps Prevent Intellectual Property Theft – If you’re an info product creator (e.g. downloadable ebooks, video training, etc.), your work can be stolen and end up becoming freeware on download sharing sites.
- Avoid A Nightmare Situation – When a site has been hacked, expect to go through a serious amount of inconvenience and aggravation. It can take days to uncover the problem and sort through any issues these have caused. In the meantime, your, websites could be suspended by your host, or even deindexed by search engines. Additionally, hackers can spam your contact list and steal your business and financial information, you could end up being fined or even charged with fraud, and a whole lot more.
Plugin Features
Blog Defender provides a number of features to WordPress users.
The product helps you fix the following areas:
- Webhost Security Advisory
- Plugin Security Audits
- WordPress Theme Security Audits
- Anti Brute Force Security
- Anti Cross-Site Scripting
- WP Database Security
- Nefarious Traffic Blocking
- Hide WordPress ‘Tell Tale’ Signs
- Anti-Comment Spam
- Monitoring Files
- Link Tracking
- Block Known Offenders
- Automate WP Updates
- WordPress Security Audit
- Tighten Server Security
- Kick Out Policy
- Online Reputation Checking
- And More …
Blog Defender provides a logical sequence of steps for securing your your WordPress installation, addressing hosting security, using scanning and detection tools to quickly identify risky WordPress themes and WordPress plugins, and then implementing website-wide security using the tools and plugins provided.
(Blog Defender WordPress security process. Product image: BlogDefender website)
User Testimonials
Below are a couple of the testimonials customers have provided for Blog Defender:
”Great way to secure your blog!” JohnThornhill – www.johnthornhill.com
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”A top level force against hacker attacks!” Micheal Nicholas, Impact Info Marketing
Plugin Tips
According to Matt Garrett’s site, no Blog Defender-protected sites were hacked since Blog Defender’s release in 2012.
The product developer also states on his site …
“With the volume of attacks nowadays … we probably won’t hold forever, so we’ve been busy creating even tougher WordPress security.”
Cybersecurity is an ever-escalating arms race and all security solutions are only as good as the knowledge and tools developers presently have access to. The latest release of Blog Defender provides users with an easier WordPress security solution that doesn’t require constant attention, is quite inexpensive and it’s as good if not better than many premium security products or services currently being offered at a higher price.
Blog Defender Support
The product is well-supported, can be used by both Mac and PC users, is compatible with the latest WordPress release and is backed by a no-risk, 30 day, complete money-back guarantee.
Product Cost
Blog Defender is normally available with a personal license only for use on unlimited sites. When we last checked, however, it was also being sold with Developer rights, allowing users to secure client sites as well.. Price = $47.00.
Note: The price of the product depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the current price at the time this article was published. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the software developer when you visit the product site and you may be shown additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing information:
Additional Plugin Info
For help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support help desk, contact details and more, visit the Blog Defender website.
Get The Product
Regardless of the type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, web security is something you simply cannot ignore.
WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting simple maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress installation, plugins and WP themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can have disastrous consequences.
Adopting a security procedure like the one that Blog Defender provides, will help you learn what your responsibilities as a website owner are, what hosting companies can and can’t do to help prevent your sites being hacked or compromised, what security features to look for in a webhost, and how to avoid major WordPress security holes without paying a lot of money.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Blog Defender
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